Changes
by MizzMarvel
Summary: Changes are a part of growing up, and Sam Guthrie Cannonball is discovering that these can be both good and bad.


Disclaimer: Characters belong to Marvel, and I make no monetary profit from writing them.  
  
"Changes"  
  
You've been forced to think about changes a lot lately, and it's not quite clear whether you like them or not. Changes can be good and changes can be bad, but either way you have to adapt.  
  
Your family's changed, for one. It used to be that every night they'd all be around the table with you, filling more chairs than your littlest sister can count. Mama'd be at one end, talking and serving and wiping up spills like the little tornado she is, and Papa at the other, coughing and squinting from the dark mines, but still smiling. Now one chair's always empty, one place never set, and each Sunday after church everyone goes and visits Papa in the graveyard just beyond the mines that, in the end, took him for good.  
  
You used to be just a kid, but now you're getting to be more and more like a man. You've taken a job after school and weekends to help out; you have to. The Guthries have never been rich, but now it's so much harder to put clothes in the closets and food in the fridge. The insurance money and Mama's part-time wages from the grocery store can only goes so far. You're desperate to fill that gap and take as many hours as you can in the mines.  
  
This worries you and Mama both, but what can you do? Nothing pays like the mines, and the men trust Tyler Guthrie's oldest boy enough to give him men's work. Your lungs are young and Papa's were old; the blackness will stay away from yours. This won't be forever. Lord, you hope this won't be forever.  
  
You stay up late at night doing homework, and you don't always finish. Your grades are slipping, but Mama doesn't yell about it like she would've before. And at dinner time she serves you first, an honor that used to be reserved for the man at the head of the table. That makes you feel weird. The first time she did it, tears gathered behind your eyes and you felt much more like a poor little boy who was terribly misplaced, but you only nodded in thanks. Your little brothers and sisters waited until you ate before they'd pick up their forks, and mixed in with that insecurity is the pride that you helped buy the food they were eating.  
  
The way you and they act together is different too now. Before you'd scream, tease, and maybe hit a little; it's all just part of what being a brother's all about, and they'd fight back. But now when you tell them to do something, more often than not they do it. There's no playing for you, not anymore, not in this house. Every once in a while you even catch one of them peeking at you with that same look of trust and respect they'd only ever given Mama and Papa. You're not ready for that! Fourteen's too young to be grown-up.  
  
If that weren't enough, you're changing physically too. You like your new height, but not the stark skinniness that goes along with it. You stink in places that never stank before, and when you shake your hair out the dandruff falls down like snow. A cracking voice is completely unpredictable, you've also discovered, and makes the miners laugh. The good-naturedness of it makes you blush and stammer, but that's okay. You can handle that all right.  
  
And it turns out that all this time, while these other changes were taking place, on the inside things have been changing in a way no one could possibly predict, at least no one YOU know.  
  
In the mines one Saturday a slow rumble breaks out in the tunnels. Men are shouting; they know the risks better than you. Rocks fall sparsely, a calm, then a shower of dust and you can't see the man in front of you. Luckily for him, despite everything you're still a boy at heart, with the unthinking bravery of a boy. You jump forward and push him out of the way just in time, but you keep going, and going, and going, and going, until you're breathing fresh air again and the miners are pulling the unconscious man out of your arms. They congratulate you, somehow having missed the fire and smoke that appeared from your legs and the boom that came from nowhere. Weird, because that's all you can think about.  
  
Shaking, you run home because they say you can go, ignoring the burning in your legs. It's not until you get home that you feel the ache, and oh, it hurts like nothing you've ever felt before. The story spills out along with your tears, and right now you're definitely not a man, just a scared kid who hiccups when he cries and needs his mother very badly.  
  
"Mama, what's wrong with me?"  
  
She doesn't have an answer for you, can only hold you as you sob from pain and fear.  
  
Even after all these changes, you know that some things will never change. The rolling hills of Kentucky will always be green, the Guthrie name will always be good, and your mother will always love you. These you can be sure of, will always be sure of, and so there's a few less changes you have to worry about right now.  
  
^Fin^  
  
Author's Note: Sam Guthrie has always been one of my very favorite X-Men characters. In fact, I can no longer even remember when I first found out about him, since it seems that my love for him predates my reading of the comic books. Maybe it was a comic trading card; I dunno. Anyway, he's my darling muse, and he deserves a fic of his own, so here it is.  
  
For those of you following it, I'll try my best to get a new "Something Beyond Seeing" chapter out ASAP. 


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